During a break in Somebody to Love May 5, 1970 at Fillmore West, Grace really gives it to the hippies.

Some highlights (transcription not 100% but close enough)

You know the people you are rising up against are right up here on this stage. They’re also in the white house but they're also right here

We’re riding around in a black limousine and you’re riding around on your ass. Don’t you think there’s something funny about that don’t you think there’s a difference.

Your hair is as long as mine and I ride around in a black limousine. There’s something weird about that and they say we’re all rock n roll hippies and we’re all out for you and you but we ain't we’re out for ourselves.

Just the tip of the iceberg. Hilarious.

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." — George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

I think I have that show... I love her comments about the band just before they start. "Germans, always serious!". Oh, and not to mention her comments about the girls in the audience just after 3/5ths of a Mile. I felt like an engine could have blown at any moment.

Apparently a longer version exists with more songs, and a recording of Hot Tuna's set from that night exists also, but I don't have it.

May 7 1970 - Fillmore East, New York NY

This was a few days after the Kent State massacre, and the Airplane were finishing a two day run, two shows per, at the Fillmore East. We saw the late show - i.e. the fourth show of the run.

To say that things were tense at the time would be a megahyperbolic understatement. After Kent State happened, it seemed as though the revolution was no longer just a verbal exercise, but was reality. THEY were killing us now. What was to come next was anybody's guess.

With this as the background to the show, my friends and I trucked off to New York. The show was weird from the get-go. As I recall, tickets had gone on sale a few days earlier for a week run by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and there had been no ticket limit policy and a very few scalpers had bought up all the tickets, and the New York concert going crowd were just super P.O'd at Bill Graham. I remember some major argument Bill had with some folks before the show even began. There was definitely hostility in the air. I think Manfred Mann opened and were not given much attention. In those days, the Airplane would open the show with some appropriate video - there was the scene from Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" - ending with the cheshire cat telling Alice that "We're all mad around here" as he fades away to just tail; there was the scene from "North by Northwest" where Cary Grant is chased by the airplane in the field; I think the show that night was the end of King Kong where after Kong falls from the Empire State Bldg. someone says "Well the airplane's done it", and then the movie dude says, "No, it wasn't the airplane, it was beauty killed the beast". Well, these were always big-fun openings, but that night it was different. People were booing the movie. I knew it was going to be a strange night.

The Airplane started playing, and I recall they sounded pretty bad - which was not all that unusual in those days because they played so loud, and without tuning devices that are available today, they would often be very loud very out of tune. I just remember they sounded bad, and with all those weird vibes, the show couldn't get on track.

And Grace was in rare form. She was pretty wasted (projection? - I know I was totally wasted), and she got into some discussions with some members of the audience. Now there were invariably a few New York Aholes at Fillmore shows, but this night there were a few extra. Anyway, I seem to recall the discussion starting with Grace kind of innocently suggesting that since it was such a groove out in California, that we all pack-up New York and move out West. The response of some was f**k California, and that turned into a pretty mean f**k you Grace conversation between Grace and several aholes in the audience. Well, by now the audience is getting pretty hostile among themselves, with the many berating the few. This went on for a while. The band in the meantime had left the stage and Grace was just having this tremendously horrendous verbal exhange with the idiots. This went on for a time-distorted 'long' time, I'd say at least twenty minutes to a half-hour with just Grace on the stage arguing with whomever wanted to argue with her. Then she stopped cold on the stage, looked around, and seeing she was alone, wondered where everybody else was. Marty and I think Paul came out and led her off-stage. The audience was restless. Things were pretty bleak in my mind. The Airplane were Love and Revolution to me, and now there was just the Revolution. What the hell was going on?

Jack and Jorma came out, Jorma with acoustic guitar in hand, and I was stunned. This was something I had been dreaming about for years, to hear Jorma play acoustic guitar. The first Tuna album had not yet been released, and this was amazing. Thay started playing and the aholes were booing and yelling to get off the stage. Jack started to walk off and Jorma grabs him and says that they have to do this, and they did a nice Hot Tuna set in the midst of audience bedlam.

Then the band came back on stage. Grace apologised, saying she had done too much drugs and, besides, she was "on the rag", and all she was trying to do was tell people how nice the scene was out west, and well, it kind of started all over again. And Paul said something about the folks being killed at Kent State, and that was maybe why things were so weird. And, boy, were things weird. By the end of the show - it like seven in the morning, the doors are all open, the sun's streaming into the theatre and everyone's standing on their seats, cheering the band, not allowing them to stop playing, screaming to put some meaning into the night's happenings. I remember thinking that us "good" guys were victorious over the ahole "bad" guys that had added so much negativity to an already downer of a week. "Such a night".

Now some of this is straight memory, and some is from a copy of the tape from the second set that I amazingly ran into a few years back. Some of you may know this tape as the 'shrimp-shit' tape. During Grace's rap in "Somebody to Love" she tells how she can just call up room service at the hotel anytime, even the middle of the night and get whatever she wants, even some 'shrimp-shit' (I think she was referring to shrimp salad). Anyway, what she says is not an ego boast that she's so special, but that we're all special, that we all deserve the finer things, and it's up to each one of us to make it happen in our own lives. It's a message that I've always been grateful to Grace and Paul and the Airplane for. -- contributed by David Kreitzerfrom: http://www.mv.com/ipusers/owsley/airplane/jarev.txt